Chasing the Light

 Chasing the Light by Jesse Blackadder is historical fiction about the first woman to land on Antarctic in the 1930s. In theisstory, there were three Norwegian women who had the possibility to land on the continent first, all who were traveling together in the same ship although they arrived there under very different circumstances. Ingrid Christensen was the wife of Lars Christensen who owned the biggest whaling operation in Norway. She both wanted to see her husband’s whale harvesting boats in action as well as desperately wanting to be first woman to reach Antarctica. Mathilde Wegger’s husband had died recently and she was miserably depressed. Since Lars would not allow Ingrid to travel without a female companion and since they thought the adventure might spark Mathilde out of her mood, although it was really against her will and interests to leave her children behind, Mathilde had the trip foisted upon her. She actually changed her mind as they were about to board ship in Cape Town, but Lars did not allow her to get off his boat. Lillemor Rachlew had been inspired to be adventurous by none other than Amelia Earhart. She was a highly manipulative and beautiful woman who came to Cape Town with hopes of weaseling her way onto the ship. She was someone who usually got her way, and she was successful once again in securing a place for herself. 

Over the course of their voyage, there were shifting alliances among the women. Lars wanted his wife to cooperate with him about producing a seventh child, but Ingrid really did not want to be responsible for another child. I thought the descriptions of sailing through the southern ocean was particularly good, and the group almost did not get to make their landing, but they did so at a time they believed they were not the first. One of the other sea captains brought his wife along which was against the strong the misogynistic spirit of all other captains at the time. She was thought to have been the first, much to the disappointment of Ingrid and Lillemor. Mathilde was so angry about being kept on the ship in Cape Town, against her will, that she nearly just stayed in her cabin rather than make a landing when she had the chance.

 

The first known landing on Antarctica was by an American, Captain John Davis, on 2//7/1821. The first person to reach the South Pole was Roald Amundsen on 12/14/1911, and it was not until 2/20/1935 that a woman finally made it to the continent. In fact, it was the wife of the Norwegian Captain Klarius Mikkelsen, Caroline, who first stepped on the continent. It was not that there were no women who wanted to go south to Antarctica, it was that the male captains simply would not bring them along.

 

The 1930s were not the end of the whaling business which could not endure the mass slaughtering to which the whales were subjected. The Norwegian whaling began in 1904, peaked in the 1920/s and 1930’s, and mostly collapsed at the end of WWII. However, the severe over-exploration dragged on until it’s last season in 1967-68. The global moratorium on commercial whaling did not begin until 1986.